


Polydactyly

by voidknight



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 900 words of the spiral taunting jon for being unable to describe it, Audio Content, Embedded Audio, Existentialism, Gen, Madness, Poetry, Season/Series 05, Surreal, background jonmartin, canon typical apocalypse banter, references to 165 Revolutions, trippy and disorienting but in a fun way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25619110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidknight/pseuds/voidknight
Summary: Jon and Martin stumble into the domain of the Spiral. It chooses for its statement a particularly fun—and familiar—format.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Polydactyly

**Author's Note:**

> this is my take on the upcoming spiral statement! i haven’t written poetry in forever so this was extremely fun to do.
> 
> some important notes on the format of this fic -  
> this is a poem! and like the stranger’s statement, it’s a poem where the rhythm is extremely important. to help readers get a sense of that rhythm, call back to the audio format of the source material, and also just have some fun, i’ve attached an audio clip of me reading it aloud. (it's a bit more intrusive on the page than i would've liked, but i guess that's soundcloud embedding for you.) check it out as you read!

“So,” says Martin faintly. “Last one, huh.”

Jon nods and keeps his eyes focused in front of him—not that he needs to, of course. The landscape has given way to what he thinks is supposed to be a city. What he Knows was once something like London: London if all the street signs were replaced with meaningless garble and the roads spun off into curlicues and the shifting buildings were taunting reminders of places that  _ might _ exist in real life.

“Stay close to me,” he whispers, and Martin doesn’t have the heart to argue. “Easy to get lost here.”

They make their way down the mockery of a main street. It’s not silent, not at all—but every noise that drifts into their ears feels  _ wrong _ somehow, like it’s coming from the opposite direction it should, like it echoes a little too much, like the dimensionality of the sound is inappropriate for the architecture in which it originates. There are whispers and idle chatter, footsteps, the rustling clothes of passers-by. Laughter—so much laughter. It drops from the sky and forms dizzying patterns on the pavement.

Are their companions in this place victims or illusions? The two of them aren’t alone, but it can be so hard to tell, especially when you feel as though you can’t trust your eyes.

Jon can trust his Eyes, though, and he steers Martin down the branching pathways with the confidence of a man who has brought a ball of string into a labyrinth.

“I keep—seeing things,” mutters Martin, agitated. He blinks, once, twice, refocuses his gaze upon a lamppost that may or may not be cycling through a gradient of colors. “Is it real? No, don’t answer that—I  _ know _ we’re in the Spiral’s domain; I know it’s just tricking me, but—how much of all this stuff is really here, and how much is made up by the Spiral getting in my head?”

“I could Look,” Jon offers, “but this place makes me… rather nauseous. I’d like to get through it as fast as possible.”

“Really? You’re not immune to that?”

“It’s not debilitating. More… annoying. This place is trying so hard to confuse all who attempt to make sense of it, and as an, ah,  _ agent _ of the Beholding, you can imagine I’m quite the target.” His lips quirk upwards, just slightly.

“No, I don’t suppose the Spiral would like the Eye, would it?”

“Not at all.”

He comes to a sudden halt. Martin opens his mouth to protest, but Jon’s expression is one of concentration. Static fizzles around the fringes of their perception.

“Now?” says Martin.

Jon makes a noise of acknowledgement, eyes crinkling and then widening as they take in more than is right in front of him, leaping through walls, drinking in the quiet chaos of the space. The buildings stand like shimmering holograms, unfazed by the scrutiny.

The Spiral tugs at his mind, at his lips, pouring its words into his mouth, waiting with that multitude of distorted grins.

“I think—I think it’s taunting me,” he says, then lets out a dry laugh. “Sure you don’t want to stay and listen to the very last of the domain statements, Martin? It feels like another poem.”

“No.” Martin’s reply is quick and firm, not allowing himself to even consider indulging in the curiosity that Jon Knows licks at his mind. “No, I haven’t listened before, and I’m not about to start now. I think I know enough about the Spiral to last me a lifetime.”

“Your call. But—please, stay in sight of me. Easy to—”

“—Get lost, yes, I  _ know, _ Jon. Who do you think spent w— _ plenty of time _ inside the Distortion’s corridors? Just get it over with, okay?”

Jon nods, and says “Okay,” in the gentlest tone of voice he can muster.

Martin steps away, and Jon raises his mind into the domain of his patron, finally letting the whirlpools of words come spilling out.

* * *

a lie inside a lie inside a lie—and maybe that’s enough

to imitate your memory and curl inside a pulsing piece of literature

spun from the thread of the rounds of the carousel,

stealing the words of the thieves just for parody,

carefully twisting this metrical effigy,

born from the ruins of peeling identity,

what’s to become if your  _ self’s _ not reality,

what if you’re out of your mind?

faces and faces and what’s not a face,

places and spaces and here’s where the walls start to melt into imagery,

grabbing and spinning you round to the melody

dizzy? well good—

and are you so sure that this isn’t the way that the world turns unsteadily?

nausea sits in the rifts in your brain,

and the way that your feet will know how to walk carefully,

isn’t that just an illusory taste of the senses and instincts that make up the world that you see?

that you hear?

perception is tricky; it comes and it goes,

and how can you  _ really _ know what is in front of you,

colors that quiver and spiral and lie to you—

‘my green’ and ‘your green’ are words fit to concepts unknowable

language can capture the few hues divisible

where is the line between orange and yellow

and when does this grey start to fade into white?

please know, dear Watcher, that we’d never lie to you

follow our laughter and see for yourself how the cityscape turns into fractalled monstrosity,

ceiling and floor perpendicular now

or at least rearranged as the squares become cubes become tesseracts,

forward and backward and inside and out,

chimneys that wind into doorways and stairs that will never lead anywhere real,

can’t you imagine the way that the sacred geometry twists into patterns too abstract and winding for  _ eyes? _

for minds?

for anyone other than one who has mastered the art of creation

and pushed past the limits of what we all  _ want _ to see,

what we all think that a building should be—

halls with identities, bricks built of clay that could morph into anything

what do you get when you throw out your memories?

will you embrace the inventive insanity?

the mountains of madness are calling and though they are false as could ever be, still we all perch on their peaks.

Jessica sits on her bed after midnight and cries that she’ll never know how to wake up.

why does the darkness turn shapes into scenery,

when did the eye of her mind start projecting its fantasies into the cracks in oblivion,

bending her consciousness round and around as the colors that dance past her eyelids paint trails on her ceiling

and trap her in panic and misery?

night pulls her thoughts into spiralling passageways,

never escaping or finding an image that cuts past the deluge of patterns

and things that could never be rendered in ink or ascribed to the tangible

when comes the end of this half-drawn lucidity?

dreams are a bliss, for a dream is a fiction explicitly.

Xavier stands in a room full of doorways and wonders which one of them leads to his end.

ironically, none—for the corridors lack termination

and none will destroy him the way that he thinks.

these halls will branch endless and winding

their only conclusion appearing when all of the terror’s been siphoned from wanderers

burnt-out and weary and numb from the pain

of their nerves rearranged and their senses decayed

and the scars of their journey etched deep on their brain

for the end of one path is the start of another

and how does one measure the end of a mind?

sooner or later he’ll face once again that delighted contortion of sensory trickery

grinning from mirrors and thresholds to gesture him closer

with hands that boast too many fingers and too many joints

and a tongue that is steeped in duplicity

liminal entity—

farcical melody—

failure, amalgam, deception’s epitome—

who are you? what are you? what were you meant to be?

questions and questions and none with an answer

for words cannot capture the depth of our lies.

perhaps you’ll be grateful we’ve broadcast these words to you

filling some space up inside of you,

quenching the thirst for the world to be knowable,

wrangling ineffable notions into the conceivable,

sit back and listen to how the lines fall from you,

though they are stained with deceit, they’re enough to be real for you

know that it’s not what it is.

maybe you’d try for yourself, but you know that it’s difficult,

we are not darkness but we’re the impossible

translate too literally, you will get static and screaming and smiling hybridity,

liminal forms that care not to be classified,

pictures and pictures and isn’t a picture a thousand words anyway?

gaze on our works and despair, mighty Watcher, for can you escape epistemic asymmetry?

all is subjective and all is the work of distorted veracity

crawling from deep inside everything

twisting and twisting like knots in the fabric of space

unreal topologies

curves that will stretch to infinity

spirograph consciousness entities

think about all possibilities

spinning in frenzy inside of a brain that was not meant to handle these cracks in reality!

so twist with the twists in these beckoning streets

and watch as it all goes wrong.

where is the end, if it’s all in your head,

and your words are the Spiral’s song?

* * *

“Was  _ this _ one a good poem?” asks Martin, intrigue getting the better of him.

Jon sighs. He carefully steps over a quivering corpse that seems to have taken up residence in the middle of what might generously be called the sidewalk. “I don’t know? I told you; I’m no poetry critic.”

“But what was it like?”

“Nauseating. And surprisingly, ah, targetted.”

“Hmm.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised that the Spiral is as much of a thief as the Stranger. Or—no, perhaps more of a  _ chameleon. _ Anyway, for the actual form—I think I would call it  _ multi-dactylic.” _

Martin snorts. “Speaking of  _ dactylic.  _ Where’s Helen? Shouldn’t she have reared her head by now?”

“What do you think is behind all of these doors?”

“Oh.”

“She’ll be here soon,” says Jon, voice filled with resignation. “Don’t worry.”

“Worry! Why would I worry!!”

He chuckles. “A realm of pure madness isn’t your idea of fun?”

“No thank you!”

Jon turns around and places a soft hand on Martin’s shoulder. “It’s okay. We’re almost there.”

**Author's Note:**

> in case it wasn’t clear, the title is a pun on the fact that the poem is written in dactylic meter - which i chose for its whimsical, singsong quality! a fun contrast to the stranger’s heartbeat iambs…


End file.
